Henry and I went to The Gadget Show Live in Birmingham on Friday, an annual extravaganza for tech companies to show off their latest wares to consumers in partnership with the popular Channel 5 programme, and we decided that we would turn our experiences of the event into a comprehensive report at the end of it. What you will read below this paragraph is the resulting document, which grew progressively more animated as the day drew to a close. What started out as a ‘thoughtful’ and ‘insightful’ piece descended into madness, dictated by bouncing, swiveling and a whole plethora of GIFs. This article is not for those with poor internet connections, but we hope you join us through our journey into the wonderful madness that was The Gadget Show Live 2013.

As you can probably tell, the whole event was sponsored by Microsoft, and it became apparent that the company wanted to push its products, mainly Windows, to the showgoers. Dominating the show floor was this stand.

On this stand, you could find pretty much every Windows Phone and bizarre Windows 8 form factor under the sun, so we made GIFs of them all.

What impressed us in particular was the Dell XPS 12. We spent a long time just spinning its screen round and round.

In the end, we left it like this.

Lenovo’s ThinkPad Twist received similar treatment from both myself…

…and Henry.

Henry also took a shine to the dual-screened Asus Taichi.

We both just laughed at Toshiba’s 21:9 offering, though.

As we moved away from Microsoft’s stand, Henry tried to capture the atmosphere on his Surface RT.

Soon after, we found ourselves in the Game Zone for an on-stage Grid 2 competition. Henry was lucky enough to be one of the 8 competitors hand-picked from the crowd.

He then faced the embarassment of coming in 4th in front of the gathered crowd. See if you can spot us both by clicking the image for full resolution.

After this, we found some calmer places to demo the game, which is set for release at the end of May.

The best one was undoubtedly the LG stand, which let visitors drive round the Red Bull Ring on a £19,999 84″ 4K/Ultra HD TV, shown off in the UK for the first time, coupled with a Vesaro sim racing setup that clocked in at £15,000. Stay tuned to our YouTube channel for videos from this stand later this week.

Just next door, Samsung had a few HDTVs, a Galaxy Note 10.1 and a Perspex-encased Galaxy S4.

On the other side of LG, Bowers & Wilkins were showing off some bizarre speakers.

Sony, perched close to Microsoft, had a bus, which was sadly not open to the public.

Honda’s tiny stand showcased Miimo, a robotic lawnmower that borrows technology from the company’s line of Asimo humanoid robots.

Pioneer’s DJ equipment got Henry up and scratching merrily.

3D printers were all the rage this year.

Parrot’s cage full of AR.Drones being demoed every 5 minutes was prime material for GIFs.

The most fun we had all day was at the end with Kangoo Jumps. We bounced a lot.

Although Henry gained unnatural amounts of pleasure from making unusual GIFs of me.

The opposite was also true, however.

All in all, we had a great day at The Gadget Show Live. It was jam-packed full of cutting-edge technology and definitely worth the 6 hour round trip to Birmingham. From Henry…

This great app allows you to create animated GIFs from the comfort of your own Windows Phone. You use your phone camera to take a number of pictures that the app then stitches together into GIF form. You then can proceed to manipulate the GIF, by changing the speed, adding and removing frames, including those already saved on the phone, or sharing them with your friends. We at Digixav love GIFs and web have had quite a lot of fun with this app. Without GIFs, we would not have lives.

In 2011, Apple launched Mac OS X Lion, an operating system that combined multitouch capabilities with a classic desktop OS but even after this short time, they have confirmed the release of an updated version to launch in the summer. OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, confirmed on Thursday, is an improved and tweaked version Mac OS X that adds new features like AirPlay mirroring, iMessages and Notification Center, aiming to bridge the gap further between OS X and iOS.

Messages

The integration of iMessage and other services will greatly improve the iChat system. As a Mac user I am disappointed to say that I have never used iChat because, not knowing many other Mac users, I have a tendency to use Facebook and Windows Live to communicate. I do however know many people that have some sort of Apple product that uses the Message software. This will definitely make me use that software more, but, under all the fancy new features, the new name and slight redesign, it is just a update to iChat. But at least it has GIF support.

Notification Center

The Notification Center will be familiar to all iOS 5 users. The annoying thing that you pull down when trying to play Temple Run will now also be found on your Mac. I have never used this feature on my iPod other then to check my Facebook notifications, but it will be more handy to see what apps need updating. Other then that I find it pretty pointless but a nice touch nevertheless.

AirPlay Mirroring

One of the most advanced new feature of the software is AirPlay Mirroring, which allows you to duplicate your Mac’s screen through your Apple TV in 720p. In the past, this was only achievable by using a HDMI cable or with a device sporting iOS 5. This will be great if you have one of the hockey pucks or when the much rumoured real Apple TV gets released.

There’s loads of stuff in Mountain Lion and I have barely scratched the surface of this product. I’m definitely looking forward to getting to use the software and I will be sure to get it when it gets its Mac App Store release in the summer.